RGB and CMYK are used to describe color in the world of digital photography. If you’re a photographer, it’s crucial to understand both. Both affect the color of your photos, both on screen and on paper. We’ve compared these color spectrums to help you decide which is best for your printing needs.

The quickest way to explain the difference between the two is that RGB is for the web and CMYK is for print. It’s a bit more complicated than that, so let’s take a closer look at the color spectrums.

RGB stands for red, green, and blue, the three colors that can be mixed to produce different colors. It is an additive color spectrum that relies on adding different amounts of the three colors to create different colors. The RGB spectrum has 256 brightness levels, which in turn produce 16,777,216 (256 x 256 x 256) color possibilities.

When you take a photo with a DSLR, the camera composes the shot using an RGB spectrum. Computer monitors also operate in RGB, so users can easily expect that what they see on an LCD screen is the same as what they see on a monitor. This is why RGB is the industry standard for DSLRs and computer monitors, because it makes colors appear true to life on the screen.